Matt Sargent would never have thought to apply to work at the stone company a few miles from his high school if a teacher hadn’t suggested it.
Sargent was working at a variety store in Bucksport in 2020 after graduating from Bucksport High School, where he was a founding member of its successful robotics team.
Then the team coach called to ask if he was interested in a job at Freshwater Stone and Brickwork in neighboring Orland, where Sargent could use the CNC computerized machining and CAD computerized design software skills that he developed creating robots for competitions.
Six years later, he’s worked his way up from drilling and splitting boulders to manning CNC machines to running two large bridge saws cutting stone slabs into shapes. He’s also returned to tell current robotics students about using their skills at the company, and sees a growing relationship with the school.
“I couldn’t even fathom an idea of what this place is and what it can do with the people behind it to make it all happen,” he said.
Sargent’s story illustrates how Freshwater has recruited — and mostly kept — about a dozen young employees from area towns in recent years. It’s the result of a new strategy to look locally and present itself as a meaningful career choice, in the face of a workforce shortage and growing demand for its services.
The effort shows how one company is finding success navigating challenges that face Maine manufacturing businesses. For the Bucksport area, the company is also building on a tradition of work that lingers from the Verso paper mill, which closed in late 2014.
“We are changing our emphasis and trying to get more local people to work here,” founder Jeff Gammelin said. “We’re a small company compared to what the mill was here before, but there are ghosts of the mill still there.”
He started out with his wife, Candy, in the early 1970s as a back-to-the-lander experimenting with stone fireplaces and construction. Their creations caught attention and business grew with designs inspired by nature.
Freshwater Stone now employs about 60 people. Along with construction and design, it owns a quarry in Frankfort and leases others there as well as in Mount Desert and Jonesboro. The company also has a manufacturing arm.
Manufacturing work ranges from granite countertops to major projects across the Northeast and beyond. Those include a technically complex memorial for the FBI’s training academy, a French chapel built with Renaissance-era techniques, restoration work at the Statue of Liberty and Northeastern University’s new Roux Institute campus in Portland.
“I always felt like this business had a deep soul to it, that it was a very fulfilling business,” Gammelin said. “It’s satisfied a lot, all of, my needs, in terms of what I wanted work to be.”
It’s creatively and physically engaging, he said, using natural materials to make something that can last forever. The area also has a long tradition of stonework stemming from its granite deposits.
On Thursday, multiple tall saws followed computer programs to cut and shape large pieces of stone in buildings at the company’s Route 1 headquarters while workers used historic masonry skills to finish pieces bound for the Roux Institute.
At a warehouse in Bucksport, meanwhile, employees put together large stone fireplaces they would rebuild onsite at homes.
Gammelin believes Freshwater is likely the largest stone company in Maine and one of the biggest in New England, with room to grow manufacturing pieces for others to install.
But as the company’s early employees started reaching retirement age, a problem emerged.
“We would pick up someone here and there, but it became a critical issue as the business got busier and … the economy for building has really blossomed in the last eight to 10 years,” Gammelin said. “And so that’s when we started realizing we were having a hard time getting anybody to work here.”
That’s been a challenge for other Maine businesses, and the area’s affordable housing crunch has intensified it.
Freshwater tried traditional avenues: radio and print advertisements, trade schools, community colleges, online job boards.
But they weren’t finding interested people who would stay long term, Gammelin and President Andy Odeen said. When they did, potential employees often couldn’t find housing.
So the company instead turned its focus locally, working on word-of-mouth recruitment, connecting with Bucksport High School and putting a series of signs explaining its work along Route 1.
They frame it as a fulfilling career with opportunities for education, not just a job.
“I think somehow getting under their skin and appealing to their more virtuous sides is the right way to go,” Gammelin said.
Local young people are rooted in the area and typically have housing; Gammelin also hopes employing them will help some stay here, fighting Maine’s trends of outward youth migration and declining school enrollment.
Freshwater Stone also stands out as an option for year-round manufacturing work in an area where most major employers are in healthcare or the service industry, U.S. Census data shows.
The young employees are among the most engaged Freshwater has had, Gammelin said.
They’re still looking to expand and hire more employees, particularly in manufacturing. As it is, the company can’t use its leased quarries due to a lack of workers.
Almost all new hires are trained on the job, as masonry isn’t a focus for local technical education programs in Maine.
“The work we do, there’s not a whole bunch of people doing it,” said DJ Sargent of Searsport, who has worked there five and a half years. “The trade is definitely such a unique trade.”
He’s still learning a lot, he said Thursday, a sentiment shared by Matt Sargent.
Joe Ranzoni, head of fabrication, grew up in Bucksport when the mill was operating. With a big manufacturing business in town, everyone knew they had an opportunity for a job, he said. That’s similarly attractive about the stone company.
“I think there’s a kind of a resurgence of vocational programs in America and here locally, and we’re seeing kids come out of that and realize that they can work for a company like Freshwater and make a good living and start a family and have a house and a career,” Odeen said.
